


The End of the Line

by CameoAppearance



Category: Don't Starve (Video Game)
Genre: Adventure Mode, Canon-Typical Violence, Gen, Maxwell is dead inside, Suicide, Temporary Character Death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-22
Updated: 2018-11-22
Packaged: 2019-08-27 15:38:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 749
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16705150
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CameoAppearance/pseuds/CameoAppearance
Summary: What if Wilson hadn't freed Maxwell at the end of Adventure Mode? There's only one other way to get out of there.





	The End of the Line

Wilson smashed the Divining Rod against the throne, then yelped and dropped it in an involuntary spasm as an electric shock coursed through him on contact. Wait, _dropped_ it? His walrus-tusk cane had crumbled to ashes in his hands mere minutes ago, when he'd tried to do exactly this with it. He'd tried a second time with a torch to see whether it was consistent, and the whole thing had flash-ignited and gone up in a gout of smoke that for a moment seemed to form a grasping hand. And yet the Divining Rod was just lying on its side on the stone-tiled floor, irritatingly intact.

Maxwell eyed Wilson with what may have been mild interest tingeing his resigned expression. Wilson certainly couldn't see any signs that the Divining Rod had injured him where he struck him with it. There may have been the faintest of scratches, but in this light it was impossible to tell.

"Fine. I guess it really is indestructible." Wilson kicked the fallen artifact across the tiles and folded his arms. "I don't see why you deserve to get out of there. Since you brought me here I've been killed in dozens of different ways over and over again. I had to loot my own corpse more than once just to get here alive. I _tried_ to settle down and raise a smallbird three worlds ago and you set the hounds on it."

"Yes, I know, I _did_ see it happen," Maxwell said, in a tone that sounded simultaneously tired and cross. Wilson glared at him. 

The man on the Nightmare Throne didn't seem inclined to argue his side any further, or perhaps he didn't have the energy to try. Wilson glanced around the cavernous room for anything he could use. He'd already snooped around with his headlamp and found the teleportation device hidden away in an unlit cranny of this place; it just took him back to the Throne. After that he'd fashioned a telelocator staff out of one of the supply caches off the main aisle, and it dumped him in another barren lightless corner with nothing to show for it but the usual pounding headache. Maxwell had been telling the truth; this was a world with no exits.

On the other hand, every previous time he'd died on the far side of the portal and hadn't been lucky enough to get ahold of a resurrection device beforehand, he'd come back to himself standing in front of the door an afternoon's walk from his campsite. (Eight times? Nine? He'd lost count, but that sounded about right.) If this was the same general domain, the same principles should apply. And besides, what was the alternative? Stay here with Maxwell until he ran out of food and starved to death? That was just a slower and more excruciating way of achieving the same effect. 

Wilson's eyes fell on the shadows to either side of the Throne itself. The monster in the darkness was at least a _swift_ way to die. 

He took his miner hat off and stepped into the shadows, walking out until he could no longer see his feet on the ground in front of him, and waited to hear a hiss. He tried to ignore his heart pounding in his ears. Before long there came a familiar bodiless snarl, and he fought to keep himself from switching the headlamp back on only to drop it on the floor as something ripped through him and he cried out in pain. He still wasn't dead, he thought to himself, feeling blood run down his back and searing pains all through his ribcage and sides. He had to wait for the second strike.

* * *

There was a second scream from the darkness, and a thump, and then nothing. Maxwell let out a hollow sigh, slumping deeper into the chair. "I am a fool. I had dared to hope."

The phonograph started up its tune again, without anyone laying a hand on it.

* * *

Wilson shuddered as he opened his eyes, feeling the sun on his face and the breeze in his hair and something in his backpack prodding him in the shoulder blade, hearing Chester panting and the gears of the portal turning and a faint echo of a ragtime melody, wincing from wounds that were no longer there. He had been right. But that meant the portal was a dead end; he'd have to find another way out if he ever wanted to escape this world.

**Author's Note:**

> Based on the same Adventure Mode savefile as [Persistence](https://archiveofourown.org/works/10533216), but not canonical to it; this is an AU of that continuity. (They do both share the smallbird incident. That actually did happen to me in Two Worlds.) Inspired by real game mechanics! The game will not let you lock yourself out of an Adventure Mode victory by breaking the Divining Rod, even though every other item breaks if you hit Maxwell with it.
> 
> This might hypothetically be a prequel to Shipwrecked/Hamlet, since DST follows on from Adventure Mode.


End file.
